Two tapestries adorning a doorway on Kabul's famous "Chicken Street" carry messages that will seem paradoxical -- one disturbing -- to most western observers. The first commemorates the overthrow of the Taliban, a regime change accomplished through US intervention after Al Qaeda attacks on US soil that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands. The second commemorates those attacks.

Among the forces working to sustain extremist organizations like Al Qaeda is one that policymakers don't like to talk about in direct terms -- drug prohibition. The United Nations and leading
development economists put the proceeds from Afghanistan's black market
opium economy at $2.8 billion, with about $600 million going to farmers
and more than $2 billion going to regional drug trafficking organizations,
warlords linked to the Afghan government, and other political figures.
These prohibition-derived profits are fueling corruption and distorting
the political process in Afghanistan and financing Islamist radicals and
nationalist insurgencies from Central Asia to the Middle East, according
to a variety of sources.

After an August trip to the
region coordinated with the US Central Command, Clinton-era drug czar Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, now a professor at West Point, told the Washington Times
last week that black market opium profits are energizing Al Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan and the ungovernable tribal territories across the
border in Pakistan, and widening the drug trade into the Persian Gulf and
Iraq, where its illicit profits may be helping to finance the insurgency
there.

US officials are reluctant
to link black market drug profits to the insurgencies in either Afghanistan
or Iraq. The US Embassy in Kabul, for example, Wednesday told DRCNet
that it had "no press guidance" on the link between drug profits and an
apparently revitalized Taliban/Al Qaeda insurgency in Afghanistan.
The Washington Times reported last month that US officials are loathe to
make the connection because they fear US forces there would then be forced
to take an active role in combating the trade, a task the US and UN have
largely dumped on the British, even though the US has budgeted hundreds
of millions of dollars to combat the trade this year.

But for McCaffrey the link
was obvious. "Is there a relationship between $2 billion in this
impoverished 14th-century desperate land, and the appearance of brand-new
guns and shiny camping gear? Of course there is," he said.
It's not just Afghanistan, said McCaffrey. "We are seeing bunches
of opium and heroin appear in the Persian Gulf, headed into Iraq," he added.

Nearly four years after the
US invaded and drove the Taliban and its Al Qaeda guests from power in
Kabul, Taliban resistance to the US occupation is stronger than ever.
While the Taliban may be a spent force politically, its ability to bring
the pain to American and Afghan soldiers is on the increase. At least
1,300 people have been killed in the fighting this year, including 86 American
troops, up from 52 all of last year, 47 in 2003, 43 in 2002, and 12 in
2001. Just last week, a suicide bomber struck an Afghan National
Army base in Kabul, killing 12 and wounding more than 20 others.
The capital city is currently awash with rumors that up to 45 additional
suicide bombers have made their way into the city. Similarly, Canadian
troops working security in the volatile southeast of the country have suffered
two attempted suicide bombings in the past 10 days. In those incidents,
the suicide bombers and an Afghan child died but none of the intended targets

plaque memorializing journalists murdered byTaliban, at hotel where they stayed in Jalalabad

It is not just observers
like Gen. McCaffrey who are sounding the alarm. In a meeting with
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) director Antonio Maria Costa last
month, Russian Federal Drug Control Service Director Victor Cherkessov
raised similar concerns. "The influence of Afghan opiates extends
beyond the drug trafficking and drug abuse ramifications, but has far-reaching
impact since it is linked to corruption and financing of terrorist activities,"
he said. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov echoed that warning
earlier this week. In remarks reported by RIA Novosti, he said Afghanistan
is now the main threat to Russian security because profits from the drug
trade are financing terrorism. Ivanov called on NATO to cooperate
with the antiterrorist Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) members
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, and Tajikistan in fighting the
traffic.

But while NATO forces are
responsible for security in Afghanistan through the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), ISAF members, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told DRCNet they were not interested in getting involved in a drug war.
"This is not our mandate," a Swedish ISAF member said. "Of course,
this is ultimately a political decision, and if we are ordered to fight
the opium, we will do so. But no, we are not really interested in
getting caught up in that."

"Drugs are not the source
of conflict in Afghanistan, but they fuel it," said British international
law expert Hugo Warner during a "drugs and conflict" workshop at the Senlis
Council's Kabul symposium last week. "The Taliban is clearly involved
in trafficking into Pakistan, and the ability of Afghan warlords to maintain
and arm their militias is clearly connected to the drug trade."

It's not just the Taliban
and rogue warlords getting rich off the trade. "A high proportion
of Afghan elites are involved in the trade," Afghan expert Barnett Rubin
told reporters during a break in the symposium.

The United States remains
firmly committed to drug war-style policies in Afghanistan. US Embassy
press attaché Lou Fintor told DRCNet the US government was "encouraged"
by the slight progress made in reducing opium cultivation this year.
"The government of Afghanistan has engaged in a broad strategy to combat
poppy cultivation, which the US fully supports," Fintor said. "The
US is working closely and cooperatively with the United Kingdom, the United
Nations, and other donor countries to assist Afghan officials in eliminating
the poppy trade. We are determined to increase our efforts to support
the Afghan government in reducing the cultivation of and trafficking in
illegal poppies."

But such policies are counterproductive
and probably doomed to failure, said experts. "The hope that attacking
the illicit economy will weaken terrorism and guerrillas is just a hope,"
said British international law expert Hugo Warner during last week's Senlis
Council symposium. "It has never worked out."

"What we need is the rule
of law, not the rule of force, and the rule of law must be consensual,"
said International Antiprohibitionist League head Marco Perduca during
the symposium workshop. "If we impose a system that prohibits growing
a plant, that is not going to work." Instead, said Perduca, the UNODC
"should engage donor countries and Afghan authorities in a brain-storming
exercise to assist Afghanistan in reconstructing itself in harmony rather
than in destroying the supposed evil that is produced by drugs. The
current framework of counter-narcotics policies is not only ineffective
and costly but will not be able to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan
population that will continue to live in an 'informal' society where more
than 50% of its GDP is illegal because it is opium-based."

"These prohibitionist policies
always have unintended consequences," said former UN drug control program
supply reduction and law enforcement chief Tony Snow. "The institutions
that make up the international drug policy framework still stubbornly refuse
to learn from their mistakes."

While the experts are calling
for a new path, the US, UN and Western powers appear committed to more
of the same old prohibitionist policies, with all the evils they engender.
With a tougher fight against the opium traffic the only option the West
is considering, it appears to be guaranteeing a war without end in Central
Asia and the Middle East, paid for by the profits made possible by prohibition.

Meanwhile, the Saudi government
is reporting a similar dynamic at work in Iraq -- only this time with cannabis
as the illicit commodity. Sunni insurgents infiltrating the kingdom
from Iraq are smuggling Iraqi weed in and carrying dollars for the insurgency
out, Saudi security sources told the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat newspaper
last week. "In the space of one year, border police intercepted 10
tons of cannabis coming from Iraq," a Saudi source said. "In the
past, the [smuggled] merchandise used to consist of alcoholic beverages
and prohibited drugs," he told the newspaper.

"We have reason to believe
that profits from drug smuggling have been financing militants who are
fighting Iraqi and coalition forces and facilitating the illegal entry
of people into the country," the source said. "It also supports Al
Qaeda's terrorist activities inside the kingdom."

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